


Spin-Off

by JoJo



Category: Planet of the Apes (TV)
Genre: Community: hc_bingo, Episode Related, Episode: s01e05 The Legacy, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-31
Updated: 2015-05-31
Packaged: 2018-04-02 05:35:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4048147
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JoJo/pseuds/JoJo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alan expected to take hope away from the city, but instead he's left confused.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Spin-Off

**Author's Note:**

> I had four prompts on my hc_bingo card: hostages - humiliation - culture shock - runaways, which all sum up most episodes of this show. This story is a gentle dab at humiliation and culture shock.

Virdon woke when light and warmth touched his eyelids. 

The sun was reaching through the bower of foliage above, teasing him awake. For a while he stared up at the dappled leaves, the glimpses of a searing blue sky. The air was close and still. His limbs seemed weak, but at least his ankle was no longer throbbing. The sensation that he’d been away and come back, however, was disorienting.

Virdon’s skin felt tight and his scalp itched, as if a briny outgoing tide had left him encrusted in salt. As if he’d been tossed in stormy waters, was now becalmed. There was a strange, homesick feeling in his belly.

“Feeling better?” 

Virdon pushed himself up on one elbow, slow and blinking.

Galen had asked the question. He was sitting across a clearing on a rock, cutting vegetable matter into a rough wooden dish. 

“I guess so,” Virdon said, heart sinking at the thought of vegetable matter.

“You’ve had a fever.” Galen laid aside his knife and dish, leaned to pick up a water bottle. He got up and came over, moving quietly, and that made Virdon crane his neck to look around the makeshift camp.

Opposite him, under a tree, Burke was fast asleep. His shoulders were bare above the single blanket, his dark head lolled off the burlap bag that served as a pillow. He looked wrecked.

“Wore himself out,” Galen observed, going down into one of his easy squats and handing over the bottle.

“He all right?”

“Just catching up. He hasn’t had much rest, not since we went into the city. Wouldn’t give up on that battery thing while we were waiting for you. Pretending not to be worried. Then wouldn’t give up on your fever the same way.”

Virdon swigged lukewarm water from the bottle. It tasted of hide, but not, as sometimes happened, of the river.

“It was fresh this morning,” Galen said when he saw him wrinkle his nose. “Are you hungry?”

Pushing himself to sitting, Virdon was still aware of the strange sensation in his midriff and now an even stranger one - that he was mostly naked under his own blankets. The day seemed overbearingly hot, it was true, but awkwardness prickled his hairline.

“Well,” Galen said, seeming once again to be reading his expression. He took the water bottle from him and rose to his half-upright stance, head cocked. “Pete washed all the clothes. They’re over there on that bush.” He paused, delicate. “You needed cooling down.”

Again the strange sensation in his stomach. Having no memory of being undressed rattled him. Virdon scolded himself for a fool. It was true that Galen still found vast swathes of uncovered human skin unsettling, but not him and Pete. They’d been through enough indignities in mission training, never mind since they’d landed here. Surely they were beyond embarrassment in that regard?

Maybe not. 

“Ugh,” Virdon said. “I need a bath.”

“A bath?” Galen’s muzzle wrinkled in a mixture of distaste and curiosity. “You mean a wash? ”

“I mean a good soak in a tub full of suds.”

Galen made a noise of dislike. “There’s a lake down there,” he said, indicating beyond the tree line below.

“We safe here?”

“Don’t you remember?” Galen’s expressive eyes were lit with humor for a moment. “Even though you could hardly walk you insisted on us coming right up into the hills, as far away from the farmlands as we could get before you finally gave in to your ankle.”

“Oh,” Virdon said, rattled again.

“Yes, and then when we got you up here you fainted.”

“Fainted?”

“Yes indeed. We haven’t had any sense out of you for two nights in a row.”

Once again Virdon felt a flare of humiliation. “I hope I didn’t say anything incriminating then.”

“It was mostly Pete who took the brunt of it. But from what I could tell it was about... well, home I suppose. And that woman from the city. ”

“Arn,” Virdon said, and felt the tension pull in his stomach. The days imprisoned with her and Kraik came rushing back to him. Hope and pain and frustration.

Arn had wanted him, that was the truth of it. Not in any overt, flirtatious way, but nevertheless as obvious to him as if she’d sat on his lap. As protector, partner, lover – any or preferably all of those. The way she’d looked at him, the pining in her voice, had stirred what felt like a disloyal desire in Virdon, too. Her sadness and fear, how she’d given up on life – it had affected him in a strangely unwelcome way. Liquid-eyed, gentle-voiced – Arn had been desperate for him to stay with her and the boy Kraik, to forge a new little family unit with them. But she wasn’t Sally, and Kraik wasn’t Chris. And this wasn’t home.

Suddenly bad-tempered, Virdon heaved the blanket around his waist, put a hand out to the nearest clump of green to help lever himself up.

“Are you strong enough?” Galen questioned, eyes flicking to Burke whose head had rolled slightly as if he was disturbing, although he didn’t wake up.

Virdon rose to standing. There was no answering throb in his ankle when he let his weight sink on to both feet. He felt slightly light-headed from lack of food, but that was all. Mostly he wanted to get away for a little while, get his head together.

“I’m fine, don’t worry,” he said, voice low. 

“Well if you must.” Galen pottered back to his rock and the fruit. “I’m making lunch. Although,” and he looked at Burke once again, “it may end up more like supper.” 

“I’m sure it’ll be good, whatever it is.” Virdon picked up his own burlap bag and poked in it for the lump of grainy pumice-like stone that passed for soap amongst humans. That Burke insisted on calling it ‘Charles of the Ritz’ didn’t really make it any more appealing. Virdon slid his feet into his shoes before he moved towards the bush where his clothes were hung, stiff and bone dry from the sun - shirt, pants, the rough underthings that had taken him and Pete so long to get used to. He heard Galen make one of his snuffling, non-human sounds. Every time he thought he was getting used to them he found he wasn’t.

Virdon walked away from the camp, the sun burning down on his head.

He followed a steep, rocky path between the pine-trees. It wound away from the clearing for five minutes or more before coming out on the shore of a small, natural reservoir. The water was fed by a steady stream trickling down through rocks from the hills above, then carrying on down into the lowlands below. At one end was an overhang, the plash of a small waterfall. 

A pretty enough spot if they’d had the luxury of that kind of appreciation.

Virdon put his dry clothes on the shingle beach, shucked out of the blanket he’d been rolled up in for far too long and dropped it thankfully away from him. Galen had been polite enough not to comment on how rank he smelled. 

Taking the stone he stepped into the water.

It was tepid in the shallows, cooler as he waded further. Virdon let the water lap up his thighs, the hair standing up on his arms. When he was hip deep he pushed forward, sinking under the surface. Feeling the water cover his head, fresh and clear, was an intense relief. He’d not craved solitude much since the crash – seized by a constant homesickness it had been quite the opposite most of the time – but somehow he did now.

Breaking the surface he let the sun dry his face as he swam, then dove down again. This time when he came up he made for the waterfall, rubbed the stone under his arms, across his chest. It didn’t produce lather, more a sort of oil which had a dense, olivey smell.

“Jeez, I’m about ready for the damned grill,” Pete had said the first time he’d used it.

Virdon smiled at that thought. He worked some of the substance into his hair, wishing for foam and familiarity. The texture was alien, but better than nothing. When he’d cleaned his hair he rubbed the stone over his hips, his buttocks, his belly. Putting it aside on to a nub of granite he worked the slippery residue lower with his hands, shivering a little, his breathing hitched. 

Shutting his eyes he tried to conjure Sunday mornings in the shower with Sally as he’d done many times before, but somehow the image – the feeling – wouldn’t come. He somehow knew he’d dreamed of her recently, but it wasn’t producing the usual effect. There was a sick, discontented space where normally there would be the twist of desire. He wanted to find the sense memory of her gentle, loving hands on his body, but she was far away, a stranger, so much part of another world and time that he couldn’t find her. With a guilty plunge he tried switching his thoughts to Arn, so simple, so ready to please him, so here - but that seemed even more remote. Despite their recent association, Arn wasn’t real either. Unaccountably the only tangible touch Virdon could recreate was one nothing like Sally or Arn’s. It was a comfortingly human hand, firm and strong, smoothing back his hair in the hot dark.

Something different, something authentic, warmed Virdon’s belly.

“Christ,” he muttered. His own hand moved with a jerk and the feeling spread, bright and tingling. Something unutterably good suddenly seemed reachable, if he could just...

“Hey!” a tetchy voice rang out behind him.

Shocked, Virdon dropped his hand. He pushed backwards, panicked, under the surface. Twisting around he saw Burke standing across the water on the shore, hands on hips. He was shirtless, disheveled.

“Jesus, Pete!” Virdon’s heart was hammering in his chest, so hard it made his ears hum. 

“Oh really.” Burke lifted one hand to shade his eyes. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

Virdon trod water where he was for a moment, breath coming ridiculously fast. Then he grabbed up the stone from the rock and held it up.

“What does it look like?” 

“Are you sure you should be up and about?”

Since he’d been expecting Burke to say something else, Virdon was momentarily confused. “I’m fine,” he said, although suddenly the weakness was back in his limbs, a feeling of chill. The liquid warmth in his groin had subsided, and the empty feeling returned to his stomach. He swam clumsily for the beach, relieved when his feet touched down on the stones. As he walked up the incline his legs were shaky and he nearly stumbled.

“Whoah there.” Burke stepped quickly through the shallow water, caught hold of him, an arm around his bare waist. Sun-warmed skin slid against his own, goose-bumped flesh. “You must be out of your mind, Colonel, what the hell was Galen thinking letting you go running around out here so soon?”

Virdon extracted himself from the hold, although without temper. He was still hating the notion he’d been naked and helpless up at the camp. In fact he hated it even more now Burke was here, this close to him. “I’m fine, Pete.” He didn’t wait for the sun to dry him, began pulling on his clothes.

“Your ankle?”

“It’s stronger, really. Another night I’ll be ready to move on.”

Burke gave him a thoughtful look as he backed off. He folded his arms. “So you were just down here enjoying the spa facilities?”

“Something like that.”

“Well I think you should have waited for an escort. Anything could have happened.” Burke looked thoughtful, and then mischievous. “Especially as you were... how can I put this? In a world of your own over there.”

“That’s hilarious.”

“Hey, don’t worry about it. Came down for some private time myself. If you know what I mean.” Burke was insouciant.

Virdon felt his cheeks heat again and the small line of a frown appeared between Burke’s brows to see it. 

“Thought we both knew where we were on this,” he said.

They’d talked about ‘this’, sure they had. Strictly when Galen wasn’t anywhere within earshot, of course. Just a few weeks ago they’d slumped exhausted in the hay at Polar’s farm after a day’s work and become borderline hysterical on the subject. About life, and needs, and things you just had to do whatever your species. Virdon had gone all zoological science, about male stump-tail monkeys and their documented liking for mutual and prolonged genital stimulation.

“How they sit around in the trees bringing each other off you mean?” Pete had said. He’d cackled at the visuals, then made a comedy ‘fair enough’ face. It had been the first time Virdon had felt able to laugh in days. Galen was being cared for and they’d felt – temporarily – safe.

But laughter didn’t feel like the right response now. Virdon wasn’t quite sure what did. He bent to pick up the discarded stone from the shingle, held it out, but Burke shook his head.

“Don’t feel bad about it, Al. You weren’t doing anything wrong.”

“Doesn’t matter anyhow,” Virdon said, a little short. “Wasn’t happening anyhow.”

“How so?” Burke sounded genuinely curious.

“Oh I don’t know. I couldn’t – I can’t – she’s not there, Pete.” And he looked at him, feeling naked all over again.

Burke held his gaze. His dark eyes were full – of sympathy, maybe. Or compassion. Virdon didn’t think he wanted either of those.

“Listen,” Burke said. “Sometimes we all need a little help.” He brushed the side of his jaw with the backs of his fingers, a slightly nervous gesture. “Something different, something or someone we don’t know.”

“Arn,” Virdon said. “Only that didn’t work either.”

Burke looked exasperated. “No, Alan, not Arn.”

“Well what then? You want me to go looking for some working woman in one of the villages to give me a hand-job? Jeez, Pete, you know what Galen said about how the apes patrol that. If I even wanted to in the first place. Which I don’t.”

Burke, evidently struggling now he wasn’t being understood, rubbed at his chest. “I didn’t mean that.”

“Well you’re not making yourself very clear, Major Burke.”

Burke hiked a brow. “If I was to make myself any clearer, you’d probably flatten me.”

“I don’t understand,” Virdon said, mechanical. Even as he spoke the words, even as something fluttered, frantic, in his chest, he did understand. He couldn’t react, though. Or he wouldn’t.

Burke looked as if he was reaching for something else to say, to cover the uneasy silence that drifted down over them like pollen. Instead he shook his head, let a small, wry smile turn up one corner of his mouth. “As you like,” was all he said. He took a few steps nearer the water’s edge, surveyed the small lake, his back to Virdon. There was a tension in it. Virdon saw that, the same as he saw the definition of muscle, the perfect sun-browned color of Burke’s skin, the faint, appealing gleam from the sweat of a hot day. He swallowed thickly.

“I’m sorry,” Burke said without turning round. “Just forget it, all right? I was out of order.”

Virdon wanted to tell him not to apologize, he desperately wanted to, but he still couldn’t speak. All of a sudden, Sally had never felt so far away. So completely and utterly gone. The crushing tragedy of their situation rolled over him like a wave.

“Jesus, Pete,” he said, shoulders slumping. “Could our lives possibly be any more shit?”

Burke turned. “Well maybe,” he said. “Something could happen to me and then where’d you be?” His dark eyes sparked with his particular brand of one-liner humor, a spark and a humor that had kept Virdon going over the last weeks more than he could possibly say. 

He shook his head, not hiding the smile that he hadn’t been able to stop. “You could be right at that.” A feeling of lassitude came over him. The clash of emotions and thoughts was wearying and he didn’t have the strength to cope with them. Not even him, the champion coper. He strove for what passed as normality. “What’s Galen up to, anyhow?”

Burke came back up the shingle, ready to fall in with him. “Oh I don’t know. Foraging for some more delicious berries and nuts. I told him we had to have some meat soon or he’d be in danger but I don’t think he appreciated the joke.”

“Yeah, so not all your jokes are that good.”

“More to the point,” Burke said, “You look like you need to go back to camp and rest. Are you going to even make it up that path?”

“Sure. You’ll help me, right? Unless of course you want to stay down here for some... private time?”

“Well, _touché_ , Colonel Virdon.” Burke shook his head. “Nah, I’ve gone beyond.” 

Virdon paused for a second, wondering if he should be the one apologizing. Then he frowned. “Actually, you look like you could use some more rest yourself.”

“What I could use,” Burke said, “is some cotton sheets, some air conditioning, and a nice back rub.”

“Yes?” Virdon took a breath, a strange squirm in his stomach that wasn’t hunger, or embarrassment this time. “Well, if you don’t piss me off too much running to the rescue and putting us all in danger, or making angry gorillas want to shoot us, maybe some day you’ll be in luck with at least one of those.”

Burke puffed out his cheeks, thinking about that. “All right,” he said, manfully casual. He indicated the beginning of the path, inviting Virdon to go in front. “Just so long as you know my offer still holds, too.”

“I’ll bear it in mind.”

Virdon took a few steps, glad to get into the shade. His vision was sprinkled with little dots for a second until he acclimatized. As the incline began to steepen, it felt as if his legs would give way. The last of his energy seemed to seep out through the soles of his shoes. He wondered if he was going to make it.

And then Burke’s hand, strong and caring, was in the small of his back, and he knew he was.

-ends-


End file.
